What do Chihuahuas, cheesecake and heavy metal have in common? All three are subjects of delicious new books I’m promoting.

When Esri Allbritten queried me way back in 2010 about CHIHUAHUA OF THE BASKERVILLES (St. Martin’s Minotaur Books; July 2011), I knew with a title like that the book promised to be hilarious, and it surely lives up to its promise. Mystery Scene Magazine concurred: “With a title like this, can a mystery be anything but hilarious? Fortunately, Chihuahua of the Baskervilles lives up to its comedic promise.”

Esri Allbritten is a smart, savvy young writer. Not only has she written an engaging mixture of parody and suspense, but Esri also has marketing acumen as well. She hired me to saturate Colorado media—her homestate—and the payoff was huge: A profile story in The Denver Post, and a great review in The Boulder Daily Camera: “To curl up with a book about a ghost Chihuahua named Petey is to thank heaven you ever learned to read in the first place…. In the quirky, humorous little mystery…. Allbritten offers plenty of reading pleasures in this off-the-wall tale. Readers will love and root for the little dog, Petey and all the others."

Other local publications have featured stories or reviews as well, and I was able to schedule many book signing events throughout Colorado.

SAY CHEESECAKE

If you’re a New Yorker, then you must have heard of, if not tasted, the sumptuously delicious Junior’s Cheesecake. Junior’s is a family-run restaurant that opened more than 60 years ago and has become a New York institution.

So if you don’t live in New York and want to know what all the fuss is about, pre-order a copy online. The recipe for their original cheesecake, rated #1 by The Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, New York Magazine and Iron Chef, is featured in this latest Junior’s cookbook.

I recently sampled the original cheesecake when I was at the Times Square Junior’s, and I can attest that it’s reputation is well deserved. Creamy, scrumptious, it’s a diet breaker you won’t be sorry you tried.

PLAY IT AGAIN, JEREMY

When heavy metal rock star Jeremy Wagner first queried me in December 2010, I said to myself, heavy metal? I’m a Mozart kinda gal, so I initially passed.

But persistence paid off, and Jeremy was anything if not persistent. I finally decided to read his manuscript one winter weekend which had been gathering dust on my bookshelf, and I couldn’t put it down.

It’s a riveting page turner, part DaVinci Code, part horror, with a guitarist protagonist inspired by two guitar greats and a heavy-metal twist. Katherine Turman, co-author of LOUDER THAN HELL: An Unflinching Oral History of Hevy Metal, is right on the money with her appraisal: “THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is like THE DA VINCI CODE with a heavy-metal soundtrack!”

THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD begins in an ancient Egyptian pyramid, where a sinister archeologist discovers an evil song written in hieroglyphics. The protagonist, an unwitting guitarist, soon finds himself caught between the forces of divine good and monumental evil.

But you’ll have to read the book if you want to find out the rest. If you read thrillers and horror novels, and if you’re captivated by historical events and the fate of the world in the wrong hands, then you must absolutely get your hands on a copy of THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD.And if you’re a heavy-metal fan, it goes without saying that THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is a must-read.